"With comedy, you have to do it right. In a drama, there's a lot of different ways to succeed in a moment. But comedy comes from reality. You can't try to be funny."
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Quote collection
Jack Nicholson quotes (page 10 of 13)
252 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye."
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"You can't say, "I'm gonna make a hit movie." You're as dead as you could be."
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"I hate giving advice, because people won't take it."
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"I'm such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I'm a good person, a good professional. But it's nice to be noticed a little bit, ain't it?"
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"I was particularly proud of my performance as the Joker. I considered it a piece of pop art."
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"In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way."
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"There are major influences on us that people are not aware of. There are big lies that nobody's willing to discuss."
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"The way I reacted to 9/11 was I decided I didn't want to do any movies that are sad or critical. I decided I didn't want to make my living depressing people or making them go home sick, so I just decided I wanted to do comedy for a while and study it for a while. It doesn't mean everybody should do that, but that was my reaction."
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"Once I got started acting I loved it."
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"I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves."
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"Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get."
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"The most difficult thing about being well known? Getting out of a hotel room at 4am."
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"When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women."
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"As a means of supporting experiential element in film, once I begin to work on a particular movie I consider myself to be the tool of the director."
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"Everybody said I was good, but being known and not having a big film success is almost tougher than being completely new. It just kind of turned my life around and was definitely a highlight."
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"I would never say, "I'm retired." I believe if I decided to just not work, in six months everybody would just forget whether you were working or not."
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"I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it."
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"I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different."
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"Charlize Theron and Cate Blanchett are very good actresses."
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